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2001-10-22

B and I have developed a ritual. Around ten each night we take our cups of decaf and walk down to the lake. If it's cold we bundle up in sweaters and wool socks (and I bring a sleeping bag because I am, as the phrase goes, "cold blooded" and the fabled warmth of pregnancy has yet to kick in for me). We sit in our chairs and look at the stars and marvel at the fact that we are not on vacation. That this is where we live now.

Yes, we've moved. And in general things went smoothly though not without some minor snags. Or really one big potential snag that did not come to pass but got us a bit bent out of shape. The sellers of this property were a couple in their sixties, the wife-half of which was also the realtor. She's been pretty much a bitch from day one. The husband-half, however, was a great guy; they had a real good-cop-bad-cop thing going.

We were closing on Monday, October 15. On the afternoon of Friday, October 12 we went to the house for our walkthrough (an opportunity to check that all the promised repairs had been made). The wife had sent her daughter (also a realtor) in her place. The daughter informed us that her stepfather, the great guy, had fallen seriously ill and was not expected to live through the weekend.

Oh.

We called our lawyer, who told us that the wife, being the tough cookie she is, had left the hospital that morning and come in to sign the property over to us and that everything was set. I trusted this was the case but B spent much of the weekend worrying that the guy would die and the deal would somehow fall through. In Sunday's paper he found the obituary: the man had indeed died on Friday. But Monday morning we went to the lawyer's office and everything was in shape. He'd died late Friday night. Had he died before his wife had signed the papers, everything would've been delayed several months. So we were relieved. I mean, B was relieved, because I knew it would work out fine.

Tuesday the movers came and schlepped all our stuff to the new place. And things have generally gone smoothly since. We've met our neighbors, the younger couple who are the daugther and son-in-law of the groovy woman we'd already met. Though we initially sensed they were in their 20s they are in fact closer to our age. They seem nice enough--very nice, really, though we've had a little trouble getting past the fact that when we first met them they were painting their new storage shed and playing an easy listening station on the radio.

Turns out that the wife of the seller couple had been uniformly unpleasant to them as well, which made us feel a little better as we'd been tempted to take it personally, so very difficult had she been with us. We also learned something interesting from them about the woods abutting their section of the property. The husband of the seller couple had told us this was "state land," which we interpreted as being some kind of protected forest. Well, I believe that technically this is federal land, for it is owned by the federal prison down the road a mile or so. I mean, the bulk of the prison is down the road a mile or so, which we already thought was a tad close for comfort, but now we learn that should they choose to expand, they could be right next door.

Unlike my husband, I'm not the worrying kind so this doesn't cause me much distress. B, on the other hand, now spends considerable time imagining this expansion. He'd already been imagining escapees coming to our house to get supplies for their fugitive adventures. I suggested we place several well-labeled boxes on the front porch: medium, large, extra-large. Each could contain a couple changes of clothes, a jar of peanut butter, and keys to B's truck.

This is a pretty small price to pay, though, for getting to live in such an amazing place. We sit out there at night and wonder how long it will take for us to get used to it, whether we'll ever get used to it.

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